Self-styled 'Mr Ordinary' employs populism, pop and 'the French dream' in bid to become first Socialist president since Mitterrand
On a vast stage in a hanger north of Paris, in front of thousands of screaming fans, stood a man in a sober suit and sensible tie. This was France's self-styled Mr Ordinary, who once appeared so jovial, placid and unthreatening that his own party called him The Marshmallow.
But now, François Hollande, 57, a rural MP who led the Socialist party for 11 years, was shaking his fists, drenched in sweat, permatanned and svelte after the most famous crash diet in French politics, delivering a string of rousing slogans to convince the nation that he could become France's first Socialist president since François Mitterrand. It would be a rare victory for the left in a crisis-hit western Europe which has lurched almost totally to the right.
Hollande is consistently topping the polls three months before the French presidential elections, which will be held in April and May. He is predicted to beat the unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy if the election were held tomorrow. But the French left is famous for losing presidential elections deemed impossible to lose.
Marine Le Pen, the extreme right National Front leader, is polling high, and reawakening the spectre of a repeat of the 2002 election when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, knocked the left out of the final round. The centrist François Bayrou is also creeping up, showing that it's not enough for Hollande to simply wear the mantle of "Mr "Anti-Sarkozy": he has to inspire people in his own right. Yet, until now, Hollande has remained a mysterious figure, lacking in dynamism. Some muttered that it was risky to be seen as an unexciting, technocrat, consensus-style politician more along the lines of a Scandinavian prime-minister than the neo-Napoleonic personality needed to win a French presidential election where leaders are more like an emperor or an elected-monarch.
Hollande used his first major rally – stage-managed by the team behind the light-show extravaganzas of synth pop star Jean Michel Jarre – to turn his image around. The rally, in the deprived Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, began with a pop concert by Yannick Noah, the former French tennis star-turned singer who is currently France's best loved celebrity. Hollande then spoke, seizing on an Obama-style slogan of change and hope and suggesting that his humble simplicity could wipe the floor with Sarkozy. In a France which is economically and socially on its knees, facing recession, record unemployment and poverty levels, more than ever divided along race and class lines, Hollande promised to bring back justice.
"Every nation has a soul. The soul of France is equality," he thundered. He condemned a France that had become divided, unjust, ruled by a tiny elite, with tax breaks for the rich and 8 million people living in poverty. His motto was the French dream – the simple idealism that started with the French revolution.
"Who is my adversary?" he asked. "It is the world of finance."
If elected, first he would immediately pull French troops out of Aghanistan, form a new Franco-German "pact" and renegotiate the recent European treaty to dig the eurozone out of its crisis. Then he would rein in finance, reforming banks with a law to separate their loan-making business from their "speculative operations". He said money would be put in its place "as a servant and not a master".
He appealed to traditional leftwing ideals and the republicanism of Charles de Gaulle. Addressing around 25,000 people in front of an untypical blue backdrop, tricolour flags and the Marseillaise national anthem – not the usual stock of Socialist rallies – he aimed to show he could be president of all the French.
Crucially, he began to build up a personal narrative against the famously emotional Sarkozy who has loved to vaunt his "mixed blood" and tortured relationship with an absent father to explain his thirst for power.
Hollande – best known as the ex-partner of the failed former Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal – touched on his upbringing in Normandy where his father, a doctor, had once run for the extreme right in local politics. "The left wasn't my heritage – I chose it," he said. In a clear attack on Sarkozy's style of ego-politics, he said: "I don't show off: what you see is what I am. It's my strength ... I don't like protocol or palaces. I like people where others are fascinated by money."Hollande now begins a tough week where he will unveil his presidential manifesto. He has warned that he can't make huge promises: France is heavily endebted, has lost its triple A credit-rating, there is a gaping hole in social security coffers, the highest unemployment for 12 years and a school system criticised as one of the most unequal in Europe. Hollande will unveil plans for special job contracts to help young people, more teachers and initiatives for the flailing industrial sector.
It is the first of a string of major rallies to be held by Hollande across the country.
Sarkozy, who is promising to unveil a last-minute reform frenzy at the end of this week, is expected to declare his candidacy in February or March.
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